Drabble Dungeon
by KittenKin
Summary: A collection of drabbles, to be updated with new ones as I write them. I predict mostly TRC KuroFai, with occasional crossovers and alternate universes, done up in a mix of romance, angst and crack.
1. Mommy

**Author's Note:** This will be a collection of drabbles (or double- or triple-drabbles), to be updated as whim dictates. Mostly Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles canon, but I may throw in some Shigatsu Tsuitachi Corporation or Shiritsu Horitsuba Gakuen in there eventually, as well as some crossovers. I'll go ahead and pre-warn for KuroFai (m/m) and series spoilers right off the bat.

* * *

Fai clung to his title of "Mommy" but not because he wished the clones were actually his children. He loved them dearly and little though he knew what a real family ought to be like, he felt satisfied with what they already were to each other; fellow travelers and companions, relying upon each other and sharing faith and affection, food and shelter. It was enough, and he wasn't actually jealous over being their parent simply for the sake of being their parent. It was more that he wanted to hold on to being "Mommy" because of who their "Daddy" was.


	2. Daddy's Little Princess

Kurogane was intimately acquainted with blood. When coughed up, he could tell by the brightness whether it was from the stomach or lungs. If found pooling on the floor, he could calculate life expectancy down to the minute by the rate of expansion. And if it was in the air, he could tell whether it was from a woman's moon time by the scent.

He wasn't about to tell the princess this, however. He didn't know whether it was possible to literally die of embarrassment, but if anyone could do it, she was the one. If he declared that he could _smell her_ her head would probably pop off her shoulders in a great burst of steam and mortification. Though he remained silent, watchfulness made him aware of other cues - fatigue, peakedness and the like - and spurred him to action.

After a solitary grocery run he caught the princess alone and tossed her a paper bag containing pads, hotpacks and mild painkillers with a gruff "here". He had foreseen the blushing, stammering gratitude she delivered later and shrugged it off. What wasn't expected was the query of whether he could take her shopping for a more comfortable brassiere.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Fai might be the "mommy" of the group, but I feel like Kurogane, who grew up surrounded by moon priestesses and had to train and bunk with both male and female ninja, would be much more in tune with the earthier aspects of raising a daughter. Fai will buy Sakura pretty pretty clothes and teach her how to bake cookies. Kurogane will take her shopping for a bra and make damn sure she knows where babies come from because he's not ready to be Kuro-grandpa yet kthx.


	3. All Work and No Play

He thinks back to the worlds in which he's personally witnessed Fai use magic, and doesn't even need the fingers of his missing arm for the tally. Whistling it up in LeCourt. Broken and bruised by it in Infinity. Unleashing it and then nearly being killed by it in Celes. Smiling serenely in Nihon while trading it away. Wielding it again in that frozen fragment of time, grim and solemn and honoring the one who'd carried it awhile.

He stares as Fai spins sparking scrollwork just so they can go _peep on the kids_. The mage is grinning and sly and playful, and if it wasn't for Mokona sitting on the man's shoulder and the bustling market street nearby Kurogane is certain he would have grabbed the mage and hauled him in for a brief but scorching kiss. It would have been fierce in its joy, filled with gratitude because Fai has survived, and exulting because he's done so much more than just _survive_.

Fai notices the look and quirks his eyebrows. Kurogane just shakes his head, starts following Mokona who's begun leading the way, and smiles when the mage falls into step at his side.

* * *

**Author's Notes:** Kurogane uses his sword to help him keep in shape and also to threaten Fai with. Syaoran's reading gives him pleasure as well as serves a purpose. But Fai never used his magic for anything but serious need, and so it shocked me when in the last book he used his magic just so that he, Mokona and Kurogane could sneak up on Syaoran and Sakura and try to eavesdrop on their sweethearting. After the shock wore off I almost burst into tears because it seemed like such a poignant symbol of how far he's come from the first chapter. And then I wrote this, because I figured it was something Kurogane would twig to immediately, observant and Fai-focused as he is. X3


	4. Preventative Medicine

I teased the captain once on account of how he's so sweet on Fai. That man gets paid more attention in one week than any companion was ever paid coin in all their livelong life. Now don't get to imagining silly things like there's flowers and chocolates picked up at each port o' call. But at every opportunity there's something; a touch even when they're not in each other's way, a look even where there's not anything needing to be said. If nothin's doing the captain'll even seek Fai out, and so far's I can see, for only but a few useless sentences. And this from the man who's so stingy with words that his vocabulary's more'n half grunts and growls.

So yeah, I teased the captain on it.

Once.

My dear and darlin' Lord in heaven, may I never be looked at like that again. Captain set me straight as to his behaving so with "that bái mù", by which he means Fai. I got it explained to me in a few choice words that it wasn't nothin' more nor less than simple survival instinct. When some folk get to feeling neglected, they don't sulk or cry or get angry; they just reach out and grab the attention they're hankering for, all sensible like. But some folk also have powerful bad judgment as to when and how to do the grabbing, and it's this real dangerous combination in Fai that's the reason Ginryuu's paint ain't so pretty as when she first took flight under the captain's hand.

Nowadays Fai's kept happy with regular doses of attention which stop him causing more accidents through distracting the captain. Like how doc innocs us 'gainst sicknesses I guess. Anyway, Fai's happy, ship's happy, captain's...well, captain's not yelling. One big happy family.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Crossover with Firefly/Serenity universe in which Kurogane is captain of a ship named Ginryuu and Fai is the Companion he's been hired to transport about and keep safe. There's a little pencil scribble to go along with this on my tumblr (account name is kitten-kin) where Fai is...well, being distracting. XD So now Captain Kurogane has to make the hard choices for the sake of survival and his life is hard, okay?


	5. An Old Coat

He's got a brown coat buried in his footlocker. Found it one day when the bái mù was laid up in the infirmary with a bullet in his thigh. Wasn't looking to pry, only he'd mentioned a time back that he had a toothful of whiskey laid by and doc's out of antiseptic. And painkillers. Hell we're outta 'most ev'rything 'cept trouble.

Found the whiskey eventually but came across the coat first; worn, fraying and calico-patched with dirt and blood.

Saw it another time, damp like someone'd been weepin' on it. Time was I wouldn'ta cared.

That time's long past.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Crossover with Firefly/Serenity universe in which Kurogane is captain of a ship named Ginryuu and Fai is the Companion he's been hired to transport about and keep safe. There's a little pencil scribble to go along with this on my tumblr (account name is kitten-kin) where Fai's cuddling a coat.


	6. Handicapped

It took fifteen hours to get the ninja released back into their custody, and their success had nothing to do with Kurogane's outraged insistence that he was a functional adult capable of taking care of himself and everything to do with the others proving that they had the talent - and therefore the means of generating income - necessary to provide for a dependent with no magical ability.

They left in a hurry, Fai dragging Kurogane through the front doors of the Social Services building with one hand clamped firmly over the ninja's mouth, and Syaoran right behind them with his arms full of brochures detailing the equipment manufactured to allow unmagical beings to live independently instead of in assisted living compounds. Mokona trailed along, cheerfully calling out traffic light change requests in order to keep up the lie that she was the handicapped man's guide sprite.

Thanks to some quick loans it only took a week to get their apartment fitted out with enough upgrades to allow Kurogane to open doors and windows, cook food and use the facilities without snarling irritably at Syaoran - up/down-graded from student to helpmeet - to come and handwave something.

Longest week of Syaoran's life.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Based on a splashpage where CLAMP posits that the gang lands in a world where magical power translates to technological ability, and so Fai and Syaoran are able to enter the workforce, but Kurogane is completely useless. I was cracking up because even CLAMP loves to troll Kurogane outside of the main storyline!


	7. Not ImpossibleJust Unlikely

By the time the two long, lanky, completely insane men finished comparing oddly similar personal histories and traits, Kurogane had a headache to rival the stomachache Mokona had from inadvertently swallowing and then burping up the big blue box. Size was not an issue when it came to the bun's storage capacity, but the stranger she'd hijacked made a nonsensical-sounding declaration to the effect that big balls of timey wimey stuff were not meant to be contained within itty buns of dimensiony shmensiony junk.

Fai had laughed. Everyone else had wrinkled their foreheads and second-guessed the Doctor's intelligence.

* * *

**Author's Note:** No seriously, why isn't there a massive TRC/DW crossover fanbase? You've got two series in which a tall drink of water travels through time and space in a mysterious vehicle that's apparently female and much bigger on the inside than the outside, can do blue-glowy magical thingies with a quick flick of his fingers, loves his companion(s) and relies on them to keep him "human" while both saving and being saved by them, has lost his homeworld and everyone he loved, is a great fighter but an even better talker, keeps cheating death (one time not even really cheating it), loses a body part and then regrows it later, and turns out to be way older than he looks.

I need Fai and the Doctor to meet at least once. I'd love it if it was the tenth Doctor. He could propose a trade of companions; Jack for Sakura. Jack would take one look at Kurogane and be all on board. You know he would. Who wouldn't?

Either that or Fai _is_ one of the incarnations of the Doctor. That's what the "D" stands for. Fai was so powerful that they had to invent a new rank in Celes for his level of power. The "Doctor" rank.


	8. A Pseudo-Sibling Scolding

"How can you have had such a poor opinion of your own brother?!" the schoolteacher demanded, and the mage blinked at this doppelganger of his brother. "How can you have thought, even for one moment, that he would have been happy to wake up, only to find out that the body he was in was yours? To find out that he was only alive because you'd sacrificed your own life?"

Fai stared helplessly, speechless as he always was in the face of simple truths. He'd feared recrimination and hoped for redemption. He hadn't expected to be scolded for a fool.

* * *

**Author's Notes:** I love imagining different scenarios for the TRC gang landing in the SHG universe, and Fai being able to meet his other self and a living, happy, adult version of his brother. I like to think that the teachers, if Fai confided his story to them, would chide him for his too self-sacrificing notions and then hug the stuffing out of him while Kurogane nodded approvingly in the background.


End file.
